December 19.23: Coping, but barely

December comes

with season’s gig;

through box and bag

I dive and dig,

unearthing stuff

from other years

in crinkled layers,

careful tiers.

No matter the times

and hands they’ve seen,

they still seem somehow

evergreen.

Annually

as I dig through

I find the old

is some way new,

and so it seems

serendipity

to see Pickwick

smiling up at me.

It isn’t, of course;

I knew full well

that we’d rendezvous

at Dingley Dell!

 

Dingley Dell at Christmas! The place to be! Long ago I gave up reading “A Christmas Carol” because it gave me the creeps. In book form, it is too believable; I’ll take the movie, thank you. So at Christmas time, for me, it’s “Pickwick Papers.” If I’m pressed for time, just the section on Christmas at Dingley Dell. I love Dickens’ miles-long sentences, and, needless to say, I’m in awe of his story-making. And the book — to me — is hilarious. That’s why I have Pickwick his very self beaming benevolently on my wall every Christmas.

I am sure, dear reader, he beams at you too!

August 27.23: Coping, but barely

“I think I’m looking for something.” That’s what I said in my last post about writer’s slump and my splattered brain.

I have too slowly realized the parallel in my current read, “The White Mosque,” by Sofia Samatar.

Full disclosure: Sofia and her brother used to play with my sons. I haven’t seen Sofia in years, but her mother is a friend and her aunt was one of my best friends.

I do not recommend this book to anyone looking for a page-turner. It demands a snail’s pace. Sofia’s writing is beautiful. And dense. And challenging. It does not tell a linear story except in cumulative impressions. It is based on a 19th-century Mennonite pilgrimage, entwined with her own inward pilgrimage.

The theme of pilgrimage is very old in literature, and we’ve all encountered it. We’ve encountered it within ourselves too, whether consciously or not.

Sofia is biracial. Her family background is Mennonite and Muslim. Her pilgrimage is uniquely hers, but perhaps not entirely different from yours and mine.

Sofia’s writing is as splattered as my brain, so I wonder if that mysterious part of me that knows something is my pilgrim self. Maybe this is why, like Sofia, I have so many apparently disparate bits clamoring for attention in my head, blocking my writer self. When we look back on our own journeys to unknown endings, how many pieces beg to be brought into wholeness? Isn’t the search for wholeness a type of pilgrimage? Isn’t the pilgrimage backward and forward?

 

 

June 22.23: Coping, but barely

I was never much of a reader. My misspent youth was at the piano. But sometimes there would be a Nancy Drew book in the summer, and the piano would wonder where I was. I was with Nancy and her chums, of course, in her roadster and wearing a frock!

Then my own chums and I would talk about the books.

That is my impressive background as a book reviewer. But a book review is an opinion, yes? And I do have a vast experience giving my opinions. Opinions, I find, are quite the fashion these days anyway.

I’ve followed Dan Antion’s blog for some time now. When Dan started to talk about the books he was writing, I followed along but didn’t see that they would be anything I’d be interested in. I rarely read fiction, let alone anything that might border on science fiction or fantasy. But the title of the first book was “Knuckleheads,” one of my favorite words. The hook was in.

This is my review of his trilogy: I have not done so much daytime reading since Nancy Drew! I am in a state of disbelief at how I was so unexpectedly, wholemindedly pulled into Dan’s story.

Yesterday I read the last word of the last book, slowly uncoiling from the tension of the final chapters, and then just sat, trying to remember what my daytime routine used to be.

I am sending Dan’s trilogy to my life-long friend Ann, in NY. How appropriate since she shared her Nancy Drew books with me so long ago. She is deep into “Knuckleheads” and her chum there is waiting impatiently for her turn with it.

A bonus: the pages in all three books have wonderful white space.

 

“Knuckleheads”

“The Evil You Choose”

“When Evil Chooses You”

With congratulations to Dan on his gifts as a storyteller!

 

 

January 12.22: Coping

How yellowed the page,

how heavy the book,

how delightfully free

of click-bait and hook.

Not a single commercial

intrudes on my search,

sending my thoughts

to spiral and lurch;

I keep to my hunt

for elusive right word

without the distraction

of the marketing herd.

No windows to shout

and peddle their wares,

no storming my brain

with visual fanfares,

just simple bland columns,

neat and precise,

of calm worded world

etymologically nice.

 

Yes, dear reader, I flip through these pages knowing full well that there are words right now for things unknown when these books were new. I turn to them, nonetheless, as I wage my own little war to think in a straight line, and not be pulled into impossible elliptical thinking by all the pop-ups.

 

 

August 20.20: Coping

Diminutive and rustic,

sly in gnomish size,

unblinking, unassuming

giant in disguise.

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,

and to unseen people

who do good things.

 

August 10.20: Coping

“The malignant air of calumny has taken possession of all ranks and societies of people in this place…The rich, the poor, the high professor and the prophane, seem all to be infected with this grievous disorder, so that the love of our neighbor seems to be quite banished, the love of self and opinions so far prevails….The enemies of our present struggle…are grown even scurrilous to individuals, and treat all characters who differ from them with the most opprobrious language.”

According to David McCullough’s book “John Adams,” Christopher Marshall wrote the above in 1776.

Perhaps spellings have changed, and maybe vocabularies have weakened a bit, and maybe also “social media” is no longer the handwritten letter, but otherwise Mr. Marshall would not be much surprised, it would seem, by any of the news accounts today. So I pass it along to you, dear reader, for what it’s worth, and I leave it to you whether to laugh or to cry.

 

 

June 26.20: Coping

Well, dear reader, here it is again: writer’s block/slump/wasteland — call it what you will. I’ve been a big blank for over a week now. Yesterday I spent hours on a thought, trying to transfer it to words. I think I wore out the delete key.

What a mystery writing is. Not that I’m telling you anything you don’t know. Why do the words come and why do they not come? Where do they go, for heaven’s sakes?

I’ve not caught a glimpse of my muse, except perhaps in a particularly muscular buzzard, a.k.a. turkey vulture, hauling roadkill into the woods. Usually she’s a hawk, but she could have morphed. Right now I’d happily call her a buzzard. Now there’s a word. Don’t you love words that mean something just by the way they sound? Have you ever seen the book “Sound and Sense” by Laurence Perrine? My tattered, moldy copy dates back to my college days in the 60s. It says it’s about poetry but I don’t think so; it’s about the way the sound of a word makes it the perfect choice. Meaning isn’t the whole of it. The word must sound with the meaning. That’s prose, too. Just ask Sam Clemens.

I hope you are well, dear reader, and can still cling to sanity.

 

July 28.19

A tidy pile of four

arranged in order of size

morphs into a Babel

right before my eyes.

How do such things happen?

Is it among books’ habits

to grow all willy-nilly

and reproduce like rabbits?

 

 

Connections: November 12.17

My bedroom. Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart.

And do I hear “been there, done that,” dear reader?

What I want to reflect on, though, isn’t the chaos. It’s the book on the bed. Throughout all this mayhem, I’ve spent a few minutes every night with this book. Fittingly, I finished it on Veterans’ Day.

The book is “Tail-End Charley,” by James E. Brown, who kept a journal during his time as an Army Air Corps pilot. A kid who grew up quickly in the skies over World War II. To me it was fascinating, not just for the story in it but for the story about it.

Jim Brown wrote a book based on his journal, but it wasn’t published. Fast forward to 2017. His son, Gary, a writer also, took that manuscript and made it happen. He and his wife, my writing mate Tamara, and their daughter, a graphic artist, did it. They self-published and this handsome paperback is the result.

It is very personal, not just because it is first-person, but because it is brought to the world by his family.

I never met Jim Brown, but, boy, do I feel as though I know him! Underneath his descriptions of planes and places flows his understated narrative about himself, subtle and steady. In my opinion, his understatement is consistent with his generation and when he allows us a glimpse into his own feelings its rarity makes for eloquence.

I recommend this book, not because I know and like Jim’s family (I do), and not because I love reading about war (I don’t), but because of the down-home skinny kid who reveals himself in it.

 

Connections: June 27.17

The library was a bike ride away

back in the day

bumping up

oof

and down

ow

the curbs

back in the day

my kingdom for a basket!

handlebars and books

precarious one-girl circus

back in the day

a tiny place, that library

in a big summer

and the books whispered

take me for a ride on your bike

to that cushy old blanketed couch

in  your cool damp basement

and don’t forget

what this was like

back in the day.

 

 

 

 

Thanks again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.

And thanks also to the Poquoson Library, Virginia, and all libraries!

Connections